SAP Crystal Reports Reviews

• Version 2008 – SQL & report scheduling
• Version 2013 – XLSX workbooks

It quickly delivers consumer-focused prototypes and delivers results and code to R&D.

• It needs better graphical visualizations.
• It needs a better Crystal Viewer.

I've been using it for about 16 yers

Often at the end of a heavy Crystal Reports/Excel day, both Crystal Reports and Excel will crash with various memory issues. Crystal Reports sometimes has problems emailing and you get a MAPI error. You will get “corrupt” reports after running successfully for a couple of years, and then have to recreate. Sometimes, for no known detectable reason, 2008 will just “vanish” and I will have to restart it.

I am the only person using it, so I haven't had to scale.

For installing, upgrading and billing issues, support is great. But for “how do you do this” type of questions, Ken Hamady on LinkedIn is wonderful.

We have a product built on the Business Objects environment and also offer Crystal Reports instructions to connect to another product via JDBC. In-house analytics is primarily Microstrategy with Tableau scattered about.

I use Crystal Reports because Business Objects, MicroStrategy, and Tableau are too limiting for me. I analyze data and processes using real-time data.

The last install was a few years ago, and if I don’t remember much about the upgrade (to a new laptop), then the upgrade is pretty much straightforward.

I haven't evaluated any other solution, and I have no intention of switching.

It's the most reasonable solution available. If you are looking for a SQL-only product, then this one is not it – go look at SQL Analyzer, or Squirrel. If you want a full package of collecting, analyzing and presenting, then this is the package for you. However, you do need to have a programming angle to really understand the capabilities and power.

One valuable feature is the ability to integrate seamlessly with the Business Objects Enterprise Software solution.

It allows the organization to share information/data with their customers so that they can make decisions based off of actual data.

I feel an improvement would be allowing users to change the font on translated fields. I remember having to work around this by overlaying fields with a formula because formatting was not available in the translation management tool.

I have been using Crystal Reports software for over 10 years.

There were no issues with the deployment.

We have had no issues with the stability.

The team did have questions on stability/scalability practices for the Business Objects Enterprise Software solution. SAP has provided documentation and is working with us on this.

7/10

It was pretty straightforward in terms of setup. It contains the basic setup for data sources. It has a good amount of options which makes the software flexible.

We implemented it with an in-house team and were lucky to have certified individuals involved with the project so they were familiar with all aspects and features of the products.

The organization has evaluated other products, but felt that this is a more mature reporting platform solution. It met many of our needs.

The only advice I can give is to just make sure that you are very familiar with the products and the services that they offer. Ensure there is someone involved who is familiar with the product and its features for the implementation of the SAP Business Objects Enterprise Software solution.

I like that Crystal Reports can easily connect to a multitude of datasource types, handling all with aplomb. It has a feature-rich toolset that allows me to shape and present the data to suit any report requirement thrown my way. Enterprise is simply the best report delivery product on the market.

I single handedly manage delivery of over 3,000 reports per month, a figure that would be unattainable without such a robust and dependable product.

I would like to see improvement in charts and metadata extraction. Reporting against the actual MDB database is cumbersome at best.

I've been using it for over 10 years.

I had minor issues with deployment, but the support was tremendous.

It’s an extremely stable platform. My reports run at around 99.94% on schedule yearly.

We've had no issues scaling it for our needs.

As I mentioned above, the support is very, very good, especially so when working directly with the service reps. The website is a little cluttered and difficult to navigate, but I’ve found a lot of help through sites such as ITCentralStation.com and other online communities.

I started out with Crystal Reports and Enterprise. I have used a few others in a limited capacity since then, but was disappointed in all.

The architecture/setup was handled by someone before me, so I can’t speak firsthand to any difficulties. However, from my conversations with that individual, there were no serious hang ups or difficulties with the initial setup.

I believe we did use a vendor team, and once again, not having first hand knowledge, I can’t really speak to this.

Buy it! I’ve seen the alternatives and they pale in comparison. There are third-party add-ins that have helped, but nothing else comes close out-of-the-box.

• Rapid report development, since the design interface makes coding easier.
• We can extend it to complicated reports with interactive charts and enhance the understanding of business models.
• Exposes a report object model that can interact with other controls on the ASP.NET Web form.
• It can be programmed to export the reports into widely used formats such as PDF, Word, Excel, HTML, and RTF.

We are using it for pixel perfect reporting, and that is why it is better than other reporting tools.

It needs better integration with Hadoop as well as enhancements for more analytical usage.

Also, a secured end user cannot modify data if the report is generated via Crystal Reports. It can only be done if the data is in HTML format.

We have had no issues with the deployment.

We have had no issues with its stability.

There have been no issues scaling it for our needs.

Analyze it first as to whether it is a good fit for your needs. There are other good products available for analytical needs, which Crystal Reports doesn't yet provide.

Ease of extracting data from various sources and displaying in such a way that user can’t tell the difference.

Largely used by stores manages and senior management to view / analyze sales metrics.

I would like to see a mobile and iOS friendly version.

I have used Crystal Reports for approximately 15 years, and in my current company for eight years.

There some issues with the deployment.

We have had minor issues with its stability.

It's been difficult to scale for our needs.

6/10

It was straightforward in terms of installation, development and deployment.

We’re implementing it through CMC and have an in-house application that pulls the report from CMC.

We have several dashboards that we use, some of which are for revenue. We have an SQL server as a data warehouse and the other division is using HANA for the backend database. 

I find Crystal Reports very easy to use, even for a non-technical person.

The drag-and-drop capability is good.

It is easy to change between different file types.

The reports scheduler is helpful.

It provides a lot of flexibility.

There could be improvements made to the analytics capabilities.

Crystal Reports could be more graphical.

Management wants to be able to see everything on one page.

I have been using Crystal Reports for more than 15 years, since the first version that was released.

This is a stable solution and we have not experienced any issues.

This product is easy to scale.

There are other divisions and some of our users have rights to create their own reports. I am not able to say how many users we have in total, but with the BI team and the developers, we have twenty users.

For an enterprise, you can have many users for SAP.

Most of the users are using it daily, to check their dashboards. We plan to continue using this solution as most of our dashboards are sitting on the SAP.

In my division, we have not contacted technical support, but it's possible that some of the other divisions have.

My guess is that the support is good.

I used Crystal Reports when it was incorporated with Visual Basic. It has now been separated, which makes it easier.

We also use Microsoft Power BI, which allows you to use graphs and filtering on one page. You can also see the different objects on one page. It is more on the graphical side.

They still have the same functionality where you can drill down to the lowest level, depending on the database schema.

The initial setup straightforward and it's easy to setup.

Initially, I did the deployment myself, although we now have a BI team to do this for us. It is a specific department that does all of the setups for us.

We have considered migrating to another platform but there are so many available.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this product is to learn the dimensions that are needed for the reports. There are some measures or formulas that are needed, and you have to organize your templates. With practice, it becomes easy to use.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The ability to create reports via the GUI with click and drag at the table level as well as from SQL via Command objects.

I have used CR with a number of different db types (Oracle, SQL Server, etc.) for a number of different data types (health care, accounting, manufacturing, etc.). 

I have been using the app since version 5 in 1996. I was a certified instructor and implementation specialist on CR and BOE (and its predecessors Seagate Info) via the developers from 1997 through 2002.

What little I have seen of other products I would select CR and BOE but I am not the decision maker of the organization..

There are many suggestions but the first would be to develop a template of how you would like your reports to look. Consistent layout helps users focus on the data rather than figuring out how to view a report, e.g., this report shows drill down links blue and underlined like the Web, but the other shows them in boxes with a note at the top that you can click on boxed items for more info.